This is not a battle! Our MCs will not direct any negative lines toward any other MC. However, it is a head-to-head competition.

The two rappers will spit their freestyle and their matchup opponent will do the same. Our panel of judges (taking into consideration the crowd reaction) will determine who advances to the next round.

We’ll start off with a non-elimination, free verse warm-up round. All 8 competitors get to spit a hot 16 bars (written or off the top of the dome) to get the creative juices flowing.

Then, similar to the RedBull EmSee events, we’ll kick off the first round where all eight rappers will be given five words (only given to them seconds before the clock starts) to incorporate into their rhyme segment.

Round 2 will take the four MCs who advanced from the first round and give them a similar challenge – except that this time the topics will be provided with images instead of text.

And then, the two last MCs standing will match up against one another in a round that uses both text and images – but they’ll only be on the screen for a few seconds. This will mean our MCs will have to rely on both their memory and creativity to try and incorporate all five clues into their verse.